At a time when tensions are running high, CIS Executive Director Tom Switzer asked Has China Won? Our debate between John Mearsheimer and Kishore Mahbubani, two of the world’s leading foreign policy intellectuals. Covid-19 has greatly raised tensions between China and the West. Washington and its allies express outrage at the Communist regime’s opacity concerning the outbreak of the coronavirus. Meanwhile, fears are growing that a pandemic that began in the Chinese city of Wuhan may end by increasing Beijing’s international influence and power.
Kishore Mahbubani is author of Has China Won? The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy (just out, PublicAffairs) A former Singaporean ambassador to the United Nations (twice), he was the founding dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. He was a guest of CIS in September 2018.
John Mearsheimer is author of The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities (Yale University Press, 2019) and The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (Norton, 2014.) He is professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He was a guest of CIS in August 2019.